Casaubon, the question of extreme temperatures belongs to metaphysics rather than physics. The current definition of temperature involves particles not the energy/mass system (in relativistic physics the law of conservation of mass is expanded to the sum of mass and energy). Being a classical term, temperature is not a good description of the state of matter in relativistic terms, IMHO. At very high temperatures (in the millions of degrees), you get fusion processes, at extremely very high temperatures you can get neutron stars (in essence all the nuclides are converted to neutrons, and what hold these together is the gravitational forces. At temperatures equivalent to GEV (10^12 electron volts, or temperatures of 10^16 (I hope I got my constants straight), you should be able to create subatomic particles.
By the way, the physics of fission (spliting of large nuclides into smaller nuclides is not so much a "temperature" process it is more a destabilization of heavy nuclides by injecting a smaller nuclide (like a neutron), you may have meant "fusion", the coalescence of larger nuclides from smaller one.
Zeev |
